In this caricature Furniss shows himself barring the studio door to Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (see NPG P38 and NPG P237 among others). In 1885 the author of the renowned Alice in Wonderland (1865) asked Furniss to illustrate his latest childrens story, Sylvie and Bruno (1889). The whole project took many months. Carroll was a wit, a gentleman, a bore and an egoist  and, like Hans Andersen, a spoilt child, wrote Furniss.[1] As detailed in Furnisss memoirs, the authors demands presented difficulties to the illustrator, who postponed drawing until the full text was available. This sketch illustrates a possibly exaggerated anecdote of one evening early in the history of the work when Carroll came to see the illustrations:

He ate little, drank little, but enjoyed a few glasses of sherry, his favourite wine. Now, he said, for the studio. I rose and led the way. My wife sat in astonishment. She knew I had nothing to show. Through the drawing room, down the steps of the conservatory to the door of my studio. My hand is on the handle. Through excitement Lewis Carroll stammers worse than usual. Now to see the work for his great book! I pause, turn my back to the closed door, and thus address the astonished don: Mr Dodgson, I am very eccentric  I cannot help it! if I, in showing you my work, discover in your face the slightest sign that you are not absolutely satisfied with any particle of this work in progress, the whole of it goes in the fire! It is a risk will you wait till I have the drawings quite finished and send them to Oxford?[2]

The drawing was probably made in order to illustrate this anecdote in Furniss memoirs, published in 1901, after Carrolls death.